In reaction to studies of Shakespearean appropriations that focused on violent and oppressive uses of Shakespeare’s cultural capital, recent scholarship has emphasized the constructive, collaborative nature of appropriations. In this essay, I argue that Jasper Fforde’s "Thursday Next” series, and particularly the fourth book Something Rotten, offers an alternative understanding in which violent appropriations can be constructive rather than oppressive. While the series begins by depicting a world in which all readers are potential appropriators of texts and appropriating Shakespeare can literally be criminal, in the end it embraces a model of appropriation in which transgression can lead to liberation.